Now I ducked from the wet white light into the prisms of the Liquor Locker. Jesus, have they got a lot of booze in here, and a lot of it is bottom-line — tubs of Nigerian sherry, quarts of Alaskan port. They even stock a product called Alkohol, sold in cauldrons of label-less plastic. The Liquor Locker must have started up in direct response to the many bagladies, bums and limping dipsoes who haunt this part of town. There were certainly some dreadful faces flickering through the racks. As I tarried in the malt-whisky showroom an old head presaged by spores of woodrot breath came rearing up at me like a sudden salamander of fire and blood. Dah! In his idling voice he used distant tones of entreaty and self-exculpation, pointing to the recent scar that split his heat-bubbled cheek. No you don’t, pal, I thought—you can’t beg in here: it makes all kinds of unwelcome connections. I’d have given him a quid just to keep him at bay but, sure enough, a member of the pimply triumvirate guarding the till came over with a yawn to drop a heavy hand on the poor guy’s shoulder, aiming him back to the streets, where he belonged. Out, old son. Why? Because money says so. I scored three bottles of the tissued French usual. At the desk they cleared my Vantage card in the little paperback which lists the numbers of busted frauds and proven losers. .. Then I clanked next door to the place called Chequepoint or Chequeup or Chequeout where a caged chick cashes cheques round the clock but seems to keep half your dough as commission for this fine service. Actually, it’s more than half, or feels that way by now. It goes up all the time. One day I’m going to come in here, write a cheque for fifty quid, slide it over, hang about for a while, then ask: ‘Come on — what about my money?’
And the caged chick will look up and say, ‘Can’t you read? We keep all that now.’
I walked home the long way round, to kill time before she came— my shop-soiled Selina, my High-Street Selina, once more going cheap in the sales. How I love it. How I love it all. Like Selina, this area is going up in the world. There used to be a third-generation Italian restaurant across the road: it had linen tablecloths and rumpy, strict, black-clad waitresses. It’s now a Burger Den. There is already a Burger Hutch on the street. There is a Burger Shack, too, and a Burger Bower. Fast food equals fast money. I know: I helped. Perhaps there is money-room for several more. Every other window reveals a striplit boutique. How many striplit boutiques does a street need — thirty, forty? There used to be a bookshop here, with the merchandise ranked in alphabetical order and subject sections. No longer. The place didn’t have what it took: market forces. It is now a striplit boutique, and three tough tanned chicks run it with their needly smiles. There used to be a music shop (flutes, guitars, scores). This has become a souvenir hypermarket. There used to be an auction room: now a video club. A kosher delicatessen — a massage parlour. You get the idea? My way is coming up in the world. I’m pleased. No, I am. A shame about the restaurant — I was a regular patron, and Selina liked it there—but the other stuff was never much use to me and I’m glad it’s all gone.
Slipping off the demographic shuttle, I moved into the calmer latticework of dusty squares and sodden hotels. Some of the residential allotments are going up in the world too: they are getting gentrified, humidified, marbleized. Ad-execs, moneymen, sharp-faced young marrieds, they’re all moving in and staking out their patch. You even cop the odd sub-celebrity round my way now. An old actor, singing arias of bitterness in the backstreetpubs. There’s a chick newsreader whom I sometimes see cramming her kids into the battered Boomerang. Every day a failed chat-show host and an alcoholic ex-quizmaster grimly lunch at the Kebab House in Zilchester Gardens. Oh yeah, and a writer lives round my way too. A guy in a pub pointed him out to me, and I’ve since seen him hanging out in Family Fun, the space-game parlour, and toting his blue laundry bag to the Whirlomat. I don’t think they can pay writers that much, do you ?… He stops and stares at me. His face is cramped and incredulous — also knowing, with a smirk of collusion in his bent smile. He gives me the creeps. ‘Know me again would you?’ I once shouted across the street, and gave him a V-sign and a warning fist. He stood his ground, and stared. This writer’s name, they tell me, is Martin Amis. Never heard of him. Do you know his stuff at all?